In 2003, a factory owned by doorknob manufacturer Weiser Lock closed in Tucson. The company, which employed more than 1,000 people here in its 1990s heyday, was sending its last 150 factory jobs to California, because it just wasn’t viable to keep them here anymore. The Weiser Lock departure story made headlines in local news.
In 2011, Bombardier, an aircraft services company that outfits luxury jets, among other things, expanded in Marana. The Arizona Daily Star did a story about it, because people were happy that 100 Southern Arizonans were getting jobs. In 2004, a Cross Country call center here added 100 jobs, and again the jobs sparked news reports. In 2012, Maumee Assembly and Stamping announced it would expand, and again “100 jobs” was a headline.
In 2013, Bloom Dispensaries, an Arizona-based cannabis chain, wanted to build an indoor commercial marijuana farm in Tucson, one that could serve dispensaries and patients all over the state, bringing money here from other communities and providing more than 150 jobs.
*crickets*
The reason you didn’t hear the news about these jobs is that they didn’t materialize, couldn’t materialize, because Tucson has an ordinance that hobbles the legitimate cannabis industry. Dispensaries can’t grow more than 3,000 square feet of cannabis here, which is about 1/80th of what Bloom wants to build. And not only is Tucson not getting the jobs, Phoenix is getting some of them. Our larger, less attractive and apparently wiser neighbor to the north, has no limit. This is starting to cost us, as dispensaries ramp up to full commercial production of meds.
Under state medical marijuana rules, each dispensary is allowed to have one associated commercial cultivation site. Where they put it is up to them, and since Phoenix allows huge grows, Bloom is growing in a warehouse at the edge of that city, not ours.
I sent an email to every member of Tucson’s city council, asking them what they think about all this. Only two responded. Karin Uhlich from Ward 3 wants the city to be consistent and to encourage economic development.
“I am open to reviewing our existing ordinance to see how this is unfolding in Tucson and across (Arizona and the U.S.), and considering adjustments based on what we learn from that,” she said in an email.
Paul Cunningham of Ward 2 is all for expanding this limit. He wants Tucson, not Phoenix, to get the jobs and associated benefits. But there would have to be public hearings and study sessions and lots of thinking and planning in the halls of government.
“We can’t just snap our fingers and change the law,” Cunningham said. Instead, he urged Bloom to apply for a variance to the zoning laws, which could happen faster than a change in the ordinance. The first step is a presentation to the Council about the cultivation limit, he said.
Cunningham is concerned about the potential bleeding of cash to other parts of the state. He wants Tucson to get its meds from local growers and be ready when recreational cannabis comes to Arizona.
“I’d like to see some of these facilities operational, so that when the recreational transition happens, we can be ready,” he said. Cunningham expects that in the next three years.
He thinks cannabis gets short shrift in economic development discussions, because many authorities still have a bad taste in their mouths from the olden days, when marijuana was bad. Now we are starting to see it isn’t so bad, Cunningham said, but a lot of folks in government just haven’t come around yet.
Ultimately, Tucson’s cultivation limit doesn’t just hinder the burgeoning cannabis industry, it hurts all of us.
When hundreds of people get jobs, they shop. They buy clothes and gas and food and drinks. They pay taxes, so your kids can have computers at school and so we can have cops on the street. They contribute to the economy, and these potential Bloom employees would contribute more than a lot of folks, because they would make more money that those poor call center folks who spend their days sending tow trucks to rescue old ladies stranded on America’s roadsides. So their jobs help all of us.
Isn’t that what we want?
This article appears in Feb 20-26, 2014.
Mr. Smith,
This is a very astute article but you fail to understand that until the patients and caregivers can grow the herb (which in fact Prop 203 is written for that very purpose), the program for MMJ is not going to get off the ground and be anything but the smalltime cabal it currently is, under the regime of the Republican cabal up there in Phoenix that has Will Humble’s balls in their back pocket. Tucson has more than their fair share of dispensaries that are putting the ka-ching into the local economy and paying folks better than slave wages to work as the bud tenders. Change the rules and then the patients (there are 40,000 currently and only 700 dispensary agents) would make the local economy start buzzing with the green business of collectives, grow stores, cooking and growing classes. Having the dispensaries run a monopoly and growing thousands of pounds of herb is not going to fly since the numbers are flat lined because of the expensive fees, no grow rights and just the assholes up there at AZDHS that are doing everything in their power to chase the patients off including having a police confidential informant in charge of the day-to-day operations of the MMJ program. Don’t believe me call TPD and ask them why their po-po over at Pima County Narcotics have Tina Wesoloskie (head of the MMJ program at AZDHS) on speed dial?
Yeah, this is the reason Tucson’s economy is slow. It’s certainly not because any time any significant business tries to open here, the powers that be turn it into a giant political football and drive said business away.
Paul Cunningham stating that in order to change the ordinance, “there would have to be public hearings and study sessions and lots of thinking and planning in the halls of government”, demonstrates exactly why it takes so long to get any change accomplished in Tucson. While the city council is caught up in all of their bureaucratic baloney and hoop jumping, people who could already be working will remain unemployed and/or on food stamps and unable to contribute to or participate in, our local economy.
It would take one person less than a day to gather information and statistics regarding the up and down sides of allowing larger commercial growing operations (perhaps ‘borrowing’ some of that information from our neighbors to the north, who already allow growth operations of that size) and to prepare a report on the findings to present to the city council. After that, why would it require the numerous “… public hearings and study sessions and lots of thinking and planning”?
No wonder our local economy is so stagnant, when change is always mired down by the convolutions required by the city council.
Well that’s a new slant about slow growth in Tucson. I thought it was because we had too many Progressives here who didn’t like business and that we have too much crime here. Sure a lot of people with diseases and chronic pain that need the weed. Yea…
150 jobs pales next to the (est.) 1000 jobs GCU wanted to bring here. Average pay was alleged to have been 60k. City council said nyet.
Blkojo:
No offense but GCU was never really going to come here. They were just using us for leverage to get what they wanted for a campus in the Phoenix Valley. Could you just think of a campus like that at the old El Rio Golf Course. The local gang bangers wanted to be able to drive through the campus any time they wanted. There was zero chance for them coming here.